kusma: each camera/eye points at a specific point, not two at once. In your diagram the intersection would be the centre of each FOV, which is the centre of the screen. If they're parallel, they don't intersect at all.

I guess you can say the 3D region is the space where the FOV of both cameras overlaps.. in your diagram there's a big area behind the screen and a smaller 'cone' in front.

why not adding tons of lcd layers in front of each one (with only one big lamp behind). while it will be really expensive it will give some kind of 3D solution (at least better than the current 2x2D stuff).

or with a cube containing some low pressurized gas, and inside classic electron beams that can be deflected on two axis. inside the cube there will be several thin grid layers.
the beam will only emit light when it will touch a layer and that layer will be electrically activated (dont know how exactly). thus any 3D point inside can emit some light.

well maybe i should patent this, become rich and famous (and get a trophy wife) and then when ill get bored i will buy pouet website and the server and convert it to porn business...

tigrou: neither the LCDs or the grid in your cube are transparent, it would be like looking through many layers of tinted glass. Best case, you get a cube that gets really dark towards the back, an insanely bright backlight to compensate, and a lot of heat and electricity for a pretty crappy display. It would be expensive too, for a 1024x1024x1024 you need 1024 LCD screens.

Actually, people do something a bit like this. You can buy something like 'LED curtains', it's a grid with RG+B LED lights on it. Hang a few to make a cube, and you have a volumetric screen. They can be pretty big and not that expensive, but they're not that great.. cool for some demoish fx though.

One of the 3d solutions that I think we are going to see at one point if we live long enough, is something containing an idea Nvidia developed -- but I don't remember its name, so I can't find the video.

With cameras and computer vision, they detected where people are and where their eyes are pointing to.

This way, it is possible to send different images to each eye depending on the head and eyes position. How to send these images to each eye is a different question, and I suppose all the current systems are limited yet, but, in any case, the idea of the computer vision is brilliant.

Eye tracking could be good for all kinds of stuff. E.g. screens are getting huge these days, and ever higher res. If you know what part of the screen the user is looking at, maybe you could render that area at full quality and other areas at lower quality. You'd get a good speed increase while the detail loss isn't really noticeable.

I've heard there are problems with these systems though, mainly that you must stay in one place for the camera to track you well. Having a 2nd camera doing body tracking to work out where the head is to point the eye camera could help, but then the eye camera must move very fast and accurately and cope with fast motion + accurate eye detection, in low light and such.. difficult!

For the 'sending the light to the eye' problem, I guess it's possible to project onto the person's face. Not easy, but possible. You then need to bend the light into the eye so it appears to be coming from all directions and not just a point (where the projector is). That could be done with glasses with adaptive optics perhaps, but then why not just wear VR glasses?

i guess that will be something like the headtracking stuff that just adjusts perspective depending on where your head is? Maybe enhanced with 3d? I can see that being pretty shit if so.. as soon as you start moving around, you'll also start tilting your head and losing the 3d effect.

Other than that, there's no reason why you can't track multiple sets of eyes around and do what you want with the data. Doing headtracking wouldn't work without some kind of splitscreen mode though for sure.

i am actually amazed how annoying today's 3d technology in cinemas is. it gives you headaches, the 3d effect is not so great and it is mostly a letdown.

i remember a 3d cinema they used to have some 20 years ago or so on the local fair. the cinema was actually a dome, with half the inside wall being the silver screen.

i don't know if standing in the center of the dome made the difference or what else it was - in any case, the 3d quality was infinitely better than today's stuff. you were fully immersed, the scene looked and felt extremely real and i don't recall any headaches. (movies were fairly short though.) if anything, you risked falling down backwards when some sharp object came flying at you. they also made the objects come so close that you thought they'd actually touch your eyes.

Agreed. I have often thought the same. Apparently there still is 'MAX Dome/Omnimax and studios release movies in the format. Why dont they build more of those theaters? That would be a reason for me to go to one again and be dazed and amazed. .. and then I'd want to make demos using it. :)

psonice: in my diagram, the eyes DOES point at the same point - they are not parallel at all. Perhaps you were fooled by my choice of FOV and eye-distance, which makes the left plane of the left eye parallel with the right eye of the right plane? Those choices were only made to make the ASCII easier to draw ;)

I remember some awesome 3d cinemas from the olden days too, where objects came right out into your face. Not sure I'd want that in a film though, it's fun but not really 'immersive'. Films these days probably have this capability but don't use it much?

The 'done' projection stuff is cool too, don't remember seeing that in 3d though. Problem with that is you have to lie down looking up, and the view really depends on being near the centre. I doubt 3d would work all that well away from the centre, and I doubt it's all that practical to build a place like that for a commercial cinema.. then the movies have to be made specially for it, with special cameras.. not going to happen :(

Once 3d is standard though, surely some kind of 'surround vision' will be the next big thing?

Kusma: Yeah, having re-read it, I see we're saying more or less the same thing :) Dunno why, but I somehow mixed 'frustrum' and 'eye target'. Having two frustrums is a bit confusing anyway, but for 2 eyes of course you have them.